Mar 05 2010
A Symphonic Resolution
This from Douglas Harper, who operates the Online Etymology Dictionary and, as it happens, lives rather near me:
Symphony
late 13c., the name of various musical instruments, from O.Fr. symphonie “harmony” (12c.), from L. symphonia “a unison of sounds, harmony,” from Gk. symphonia “harmony, concert,” from symphonos “harmonious,” from syn- “together” + phone “voice, sound”[.]
Thus, at their most basic, the elements of the word “symphony” can be used to describe sounds together. In this sense, many things in chapter 132 make symphony. When Melville describes the weather by writing, “The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure,” he creates a sense of fluidity between elements of nature, and in going on to provide each with masculine or feminine characteristics, creates a harmony of both the natural world and gender. He explores this idea further by associating “gentle… feminine” birds with the air and “murderous… masculine” beasts (leviathans, sharks, etc.) with the sea, and by illustrating the natural balance created by the two groups.
Immediately after Ahab enters the scene, however, Ishmael’s tone changes dramatically:
Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl’s forehead of heaven.
By combining all these thoughts with semicolons, Melville links them through a sort of simultaneity; Ahab’s disruption of the symphonic beauty of nature is emphasized by having all the details of his entry be read at once. Were this chapter a musical symphony, this paragraph would be pure dissonance. However, the trend of classical music is to resolve dissonance, and despite Ahab’s best efforts, he cannot stay such a resolution… and what a beautiful resolution it is:
But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, that cantankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him… Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.
If Melville is a composer, this is his Romantic testament to the power of nature. Nowhere in the book—and this is saying something—is there a clearer or more powerful example of the triumph of nature over the will of man. Until the end, maybe.
One Response to “A Symphonic Resolution”
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I think you are very right to say that this chapter is an example of the power of nature, meant to make the reader think about the validity of Ahab’s constant struggle against it. I am not sure I would exactly call it a “triumph” over the will of man however. While Ahab does briefly entertain the thought of being able to accept a place within the larger natural world, his decision to pursue Moby Dick condemns him to die apart from it. I never really got the sense that he was seriously considering giving up his obsession, but perhaps just lamenting his inability to. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the musical terminology you brought into your post, especially describing Ahab as the dissonance in the music of nature.